fbpx

The Centre for Human Rights is both honoured and delighted to have hosted Mrs Mary Robinson for a memorable 'fireside chat' in the Sanctuary room, overlooking the Eternal Flame, at Freedom Park in Pretoria last night (7 August 2012).

Mary Robinson is Extraordinary Professor in the Centre for Human Rights and the Centre for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria, both of which were pleased to welcome all guests to Freedom Park.

This was indeed a very special occasion: Mrs Robinson is in South Africa to deliver the 10th Nelson Mandela Foundation Lecture. This she did three days ago, at Cape Town City Hall, the very place where Nelson Mandela delivered his first speech after he was released from prison on 11 February 1990.

In anticipation of her visit, Mrs Robinson contacted us to say she’d like to come and pay us a visit – such is her loyalty to our two centres and her passion for interacting with young human rights activists. The idea of a fireside chat was ventured and Freedom Park proved the perfect location for a close encounter between a world figure in human rights and young professionals and aspiring activists. With the audience gathered around at the feet of the Elder that she is, Mary Robinson spoke for halfan hour about her childhood, her education and her career.

The only girl, and the middle child, among five siblings, her struggle for equality and human rights started early. After law studies at Trinity College, Dublin, she went to Harvard University at the time of the Vietnam War and encountered a different way of doing things. She returned to Ireland, where young people were generally expected to be demure and to be seen but not heard, with a ‘Harvard humility’ according to her later-to-be husband: a committed and confident advocate for human rights. She was elected to the Senate at age 26 and caused a stir advocating for family planning in Catholic Ireland in the early 1970s. She spoke of her election to the Presidency of Ireland and what it meant to be the first Head of State to visit Rwanda after the Genocide. Her challenges and accomplishments as the second UN High Commissioner for Human Rights are well known. Since then, she has been very active in a multitude of areas and under the umbrella of many organisations, most recently through her foundation on the area of climate justice.

She held the audience's keen attention with the strength of her personality and presence, and brought much laughter and fun with anecdotes and very inspiring stories from her life and experiences.It is, however,the second part of the evening that Mary Robinson most enjoyed: for almost another hour, she answered questions on everything from political repression and transnational corporate responsibility to the link between HIV/AIDS and climate change. Drawing from her life and illustrious career, she offered thoughts and suggestions for meaningful change. She constantly exhorted the young people to use the formidable social media tools that exist today to map and track human rights violations and to push for accountability through publicity.

There is a Bemba (Zambia) saying that ‘one who enters the forest doesn’t turn back when he hears the twigs breaking’. It seems that public service and human rights are a forest Mrs Robinson entered many years ago and that, despite the many breaking twigs, she stayed the course. Many of those in the audiencelast night are either about to or have just entered that forest. Her thoughts and suggestionswill be useful tools as they face the perennial challenge of human rights for all.

In a word, it was an excellent evening. As hosts, we shone bright as always, for which we owe a debt of gratitude to Carole Viljoen and Eric Lwanga who saw to all the preparations and delivered a function that was as novel (even for us) as it was glamorous. The catering was excellent, the decor truly unique and the attendance just perfect. Thank you Eric and Carole, for flying the Centre standard as high as always.

Dear Mrs Robinson, thank you for the privilege of hosting you.

Newsletter

 Subscribe to our newsletter